Plans were well underway to launch the Space Shuttle at Vandenberg in the early 1980s.

The shuttle was what a rocket could never be: A flying aircraft with a human pilot.

The insulting phrase for passive occupants of a spacecraft was “Spam in a can.”

To the astronauts who cut their flying teeth in combat or as test pilots, the idea of being an observer rather than an active participant was a disgrace.

Pilots engaged in real flight was the “right stuff,” as author Tom Wolfe documented in his biography of the first space program astronauts.

One shuttle’s name even made reference to the television spacecraft, Enterprise.

Orbital flights

After test glide and landings upon release from aircraft in 1977, the Space Shuttle began orbital flights in April 1981.

The shuttle would launch 135 times from Florida — but only 133 would land successfully.

Challenger exploded Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven aboard. Cold weather damaged seals in rockets leading to catastrophe.

Columbia disintegrated during reentry Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts on board due to a heat shield damaged during liftoff.

After the Challenger disaster, the entire program underwent an audit, and it was discovered that the SLC-6 launch pad — recycled from previous canceled Air Force projects like the never-launched Manned Orbital Laboratory — would be destroyed by the force of the first shuttle launch.

The effect would have been similar to the April 2023 SpaceX Starship launch in Texas that hurled concrete powder miles from the launch site and damaged the launch vehicle.

That was all in the future as a Boeing 747 jet carried a Space Shuttle to Vandenberg (then an Air Force base) for a promotional look at what was hoped would be a West Coast base of operations for the shuttle.

If my recollection is correct, there has never been a manned flight launched from Vandenberg.

In a full circle moment, SLC-6 launch pad is now leased for an expansion of the SpaceX Falcon program. The Falcon is a smaller rocket, carrying about 25% of the shuttle’s maximum.

Recently, the SpaceX program has looked to expand launches, further causing friction with the California Coastal Commission.

S.E. Seager wrote this story Nov. 7, 1983:

Space shuttle touched down at Vandenberg: Discovery

Lines of spectators, cameras and M-16-toting security police greeted the newest space shuttle as it rode piggyback on a modified Boeing 747 jetliner and landed without a hitch Sunday at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The $1 billion shuttle, dubbed Discovery, looked like a helmet atop the jetliner as the two aircraft approached the runway from the south shortly before 11 a.m.

The shuttle was to be on display to the public on the Vandenberg runway today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Air Force spokesman Bob Craig said the base expected 100,000 people to visit.

During the landing Sunday, a small white T-38 jet, acting as case plane, tarted around the shuttle as the 747 dropped down to 2,000 feet above Santa Maria. The chase plane crew takes pictures of the shuttle and watches for any in-flight problems.

The four-engine 747 then banked steeply to the right and made a pass over the runway, roaring within several hundred feet of a cluster of reporters and photographers.

Hundreds of cars lined the roads inside and outside the base as onlookers, most of them employees of base contractors, watched the shuttle fly above them.

The jet carrier made a wide sweep toward the ocean, then swung back for a smooth but deafening landing at 11:07 a.m.

“We had no problems, no technical problems,” said pilot Fitzhugh L. Fulton, one of the 747’s four pilots who flew the jet from Edwards Air Force Base. “It’s easy to fly.”

The shuttle was flown to Vandenberg and above the Ventura, Santa Barbara and Santa Maria areas to give the public a view of the craft that will be launched from the Lompoc base in October 1985.

The Discovery, recently completed at Palmdale, is the fourth shuttle to be built and the second to land at Vandenberg atop a 747. A jet carried the Enterprise to the base in 1979.

The newest orbiter will leave Vandenberg on Tuesday for Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will fly at least three missions before returning for the first Vandenberg launch. Between five and 10 annual missions may be launched from Vandenberg.

The craft weighs 148,000 pounds empty and will weigh about 210,00 pounds in flight. It is 122 feet long and 78 feet wide; about the size of a DC-9 commercial airliner. It is removed or placed aboard the 747 with a bridge-like crane called a mating facility.

The Air Force has spent $2.5 billion to build the space shuttle launch complex.

Construction included the pouring of 250,000 cubic yards of concrete — enough to build a 25-mile four lane freeway — the use of 9,000 tons of steel reinforcing bar and 15,000 tons of structural steel. The latter would build a 120-story office building.

Shuttles launched from Vandenberg will be put on polar, or south to north, orbits; Florida launches are put on equatorial orbits.